공동경비구역 JSA (Joint Security Area)

The Joint Security Area at Panmunjom is a real and very strange place, and the film could not exist without its specific geography: a shared compound where soldiers of both Koreas stand within a few metres of each other, permanently, with a line painted on the ground between them. From the situation: the armistice rather than a peace, the guard posts facing each other, the rules against speaking across the line, and the fact that the men on both sides are conscripts of the same age who share a language. Park Chan-wook builds the film as an investigation into a shooting, and the answer is that they had been visiting each other. The division is not the backdrop; it is the thing that makes an ordinary friendship a capital offence.